Sookie Audio Books

True Blood Video

Sookie short stories

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Out of the Swedish mist came Alexander Skarsgard, the evil, increasingly nuanced vampire leader Eric Northman of True Blood. He sucks blood; he stars in Lady Gaga's video for "Paparazzi" as an abusive, ill-fated boyfriend; he gets recognized by fans on the street over the course of our interview.

MIGUEL ENAMORADO: Hi Alex, how are you?

ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD: Hey Miguel, I'm good, how are you doing?

REBECCA SINN: Where are you?

SKARSGÅRD: I'm in Veras, California. Are you guys in New York?

ENAMORADO: We're in the office while you're probably outside on a beautiful day.

Nashville has a tradition of producing musicians who are, well, not traditional, and yet they find success in the music industry. The names Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Steve Earle come to mind. Jace Everett, 37, hopes that he can become one of them, but if not, he can live with that too.

"I spent most of my life burning bridges," Everett said via phone from his home in Texas. "I am just not interested in trying to be part of the mainstream by changing who I am to fit into it."

Everett feels a special kinship with Nelson, whose album "Red-headed Stranger" was what turned him on to music. "He crosses all the musical borders and unwittingly I have followed that track."

Everett did brush shoulders with the mainstream in 2005 with the recording of his eponymous solo effort, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. "There was a lot of compromise on that album," Everett said.Read on

Los Angeles, like the rest of the country, may be infested with vampire culture, as evidenced by the "Twilight" juggernaut, "True Blood" and its TV spinoffs, and lots of clubs and societies for bloodsuckers, but it shows no sign of stopping. Angelenos ruing the departure of this year's high-profile Comic-Con will find this weekend ripe for a fantasy fix, with no fewer than four major opportunities welcoming woodland nymphs, drooling zombies and sexy vampires. Between Serendipity's secret garden party, two zombie walks and Vampire-Con, Los Angeles will be crawling with creatures . . . even more than usual, that is.

Friday's Serendipity party focuses on the sweet and sumptuous. At downtown's Madera Design House, a 3,600-square-foot art and design installation, Leila Fakouri and partner Alison Segura premiere a two-day performance-party where patrons are encouraged to interact with a menagerie of characters like the Stilt Circus' Winged Beast and other animal-human hybrids. Set in the whimsical, garden-like décor of the Design House, Fakouri says, "We want people to feel like they are stepping into another world, like Alice in Wonderland." Leaving no sense underwhelmed, the evening includes decadent desserts and drinks (plus vegan creations by Stephen Hauptfuhr), while Dublab's Carlos Niño provides an alter-dimensional soundtrack.

For those who prefer rotting flesh and guttural grunts, the Hollywood Outdoor Cinema (in the old Circuit City parking lot on Sunset Boulevard) kicks off a zombie soiree and screening of the Brit comedy "Shaun of the Dead" at 7 p.m. Saturday. A zombie makeup workshop and fashion show is open to anyone who wants to strut, shuffle and moan-for-brains down the runway. Seth Grahame-Smith, author of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," will be on site to sign his book, as will S.G. Browne, author of "Breathers." After a group zombie jaunt around the area, the moldy masses will settle down for the screening at 9 p.m. Remarkably, this coincides with another unaffiliated zombie walk in West Hollywood, though organizers listed on the event website ( www.socalzombiewalk.com) have not responded to Times e-mails. Hollywood Outdoor Cinema organizer Ryan Reiter says he hopes the zombie nation can combine forces.

Vampire-Con is the weekend's most sprawling event, a three-day bloodletting that is said to be the first convention of its kind devoted to "vam-pop culture." The brainchild of events producer Wendi Mirabella, (Moondance Events), Vampire-Con starts Friday with a two-day film festival at the New Beverly Cinema, screening classics that include "The Velvet Vampire" and "The Lost Boys" as well as a sneak preview of "Midnight Son," forthcoming from the production team behind "The Blair Witch Project."Read on

Question: How about a hot and juicy True Blood scoop on Sookie and Eric. —DanaAusiello: Sookie will be planting her luscious lips all over Eric’s hard body in Sunday’s episode. Hot any juicy enough for you?

Ben at the 'Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technology' ( not kidding) has written before about True Blood ( read past articles here )

[Contains spoilers.] How far does personhood and the rights associated with it reach across species? True Blood gives us an intelligent exploration of some aspects of this issue, specifically when that other species is perceived as dangerous, cruel, unnatural, and unholy. Unfortunately though, too often even those who support vampire rights refer to them as not being persons, instead emphasizing that they are essentially human or that vampires are a second species deserving of rights. A much more adaptable framework of rights could be built based on emphasizing the characteristics of personhood, such as intelligence and capacity to feel.

The most blatant example of this poor framing is an American Vampire League poster that reads “Vampires were people too.” While it may be reading too much into a humorous promotional poster from HBO to take this as representative of the American Vampire League’s arguments, as elsewhere the AVL site mentions “guaranteeing a basic set of rights for all sentient beings,” there is little emphasis on nonhumans being persons throughout the show. There is much more discussion, for instance, of the extent to which Bill Compton has the characteristics of a human, than the extent to which he has the characteristics of a person. Sookie Stackhouse and Bill joke about the extent to which he has mastered the line between vampire and human, not abomination and person. At least the vampire-hating Fellowship of the Sun understands the importance of personhood when they deny vampires it.

The Darker Side of Personhood

When Sarah Newlin tells Jason Stackhouse that the vampire he watched die wasn’t a person because a person wouldn’t do things such as feed on a human, Jason responds that “my gran and my girlfriend were killed by my best friend, just because he hated vampires, and he was a person.” Jason is correct that his human friend was a person, and the uncomfortable reality is regardless of whether a system of rights is based on species or personhood, some of the people and some of the humans will engage in deplorable acts. Perhaps virtuous individuals are “more” of a person or have more “humanity” than wicked individuals, but they are still people deserving of basic rights. It may be that there are vampires whom we haven’t seen on the series who have grown so twisted in their nests that we would not recognize their warped minds as thinking, but we should be hesitant to make that judgment. The flashbacks of the brutality that Bill was once capable of compared to his current relationship with Sookie serve as a powerful illustration of just how much one can change when given the opportunity of agelessness.